StarfishArts

I designed and developed the website StarfishArts, which exhibits the original paintings, handmade jewelry, and photographs by artist Laurie Ingersoll.

Web Design

The website has six main sections: the home page, three gallery sections—one each for paintings, jewelry, and photography—and two informational sections about art therapy sessions and art classes.

Logo Design

For the StarfishArts logo, Laurie wanted a certain style of a script typeface, which I used. However, I made a couple modifications: I made the tail of the first letter S go in a swirl, alluding to the swirly shapes of much of Laurie’s jewelry, and I replaced the dot of the lowercase letter I with a starfish shape.

Icon Design

Each of the links in the website’s main navigation menu has a decorative icon of an abstract shape. The design of these abstract shapes were derived from the shapes of Laurie’s handmade jewelry, which gives her website a distinctive look that is personal to her.

Image Editing

The website’s images of the paintings were photographed from a camera. In some of these photos, the paintings had reflections over them because they were behind glass panes. Most of the paintings also looked discolored or dark due to the lack of light in the room where they had been photographed.

To fix these cosmetic problems, I used Photoshop to digitally “erase” the glossy shines over the paintings, and I balanced out the color and brightness of the images to restore the paintings to their original vividness.

WordPress Integration

I developed the StarfishArts website to work with WordPress, which is a tool that gives website owners the ability to quickly upload images and edit text on their websites without requiring nerdy technical knowledge.